Pacific Leatherback Sea Turtles Could Be Extinct in 20 Years

Numbers for the turtles have been declining by 5.9 percent since the 1980′s. The study reports, ”one of the sites on Bird’s Head Peninsula that accounts for 75 percent of total leatherback nesting in the western Pacific — nests have fallen from a peak of 14,455 in 1984 to a low of 1,532 in 2011.” They go on to say that since the females come to nest three times a year that puts an approximate total number of turtles in that nesting area at 500. A far cry from the nearly 5,000 that nested there in the 80′s.